• Stories, Sharing and Emotions

    Posted on December 6th, 2011 by and currently 6 commenting.

    I’ve never given The Palms Restaurant much thought. I’ve passed by them in more than one city. Knew they started many years ago with the one little place in New York City. I certainly knew it was famous on some level. But this weekend I heard a heartfelt version of this little story about their name and it got stuck in my heart:

    “Italian immigrants Pio Bozzi and John Ganzi opened the first Palm restaurant in 1926. It was originally intended to be named La Parma, but a city licensing clerk misunderstood the thick Italian accent of the founders. The owners found it was easier to change the name than to get the license reissued.”

    The rather factual wording above is straight from Wikipedia. But the emotional story is still there.

    Don’t you feel it?

    Can’t you just imagine the confusion and disappointment or maybe exhausted laughter over a glass of wine when the two friends, caught up in the excitement of getting their first restaurant started, realized the name was written down wrong?

    Even the bare bones wiki version of their start up story triggers emotion.

    In some ways, I would go so far to say this little story even inspires me to remember that mistakes or missteps have a way of working themselves out in the long run.

    They really do.

    Emotional stories capture our heart because we can see ourselves in them.

    We can relate.

    Which is why we want to share them with others.

    Research by our friends at KellerFay has found that strong emotional content is key to people’s desire to pass along things they hear about brands, either though word of mouth or online sharing.

    Ed Keller quoted Heather Oldani from McDonald’s in one of his recent blog post and I love it:

    “For brands, showing emotion is the new black.”

    One of the most often repeated lines in the Brains on Fire book is also one of my absolute favorites:

    Your company is the stories people tell about it.

    And I might add, it’s the emotional, inspiring ones that get stuck in our hearts. Which is great place for your company or organization to live.
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    So your turn: What stories about a brand or organization have you been moved to shared recently and why? What emotions do those stories trigger?
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  • The Courage to Wonder

    Posted on November 21st, 2011 by and currently 4 commenting.

    Last week Robbin Phillips, our client Emily Kirkpatrick (National Center for Family Literacy) and I attended the WOMMA Summit in Vegas. If you didn’t make this year’s summit you missed a good one. Great, thought-provoking keynotes, a WOMMA worthy venue (the Cosmopolitan rocked!) and a large turnout of brands and agencies. It was great to see many old friends and the WOMMA staff.

    I had the honor of co-presenting the Wonderopolis case study with Emily during our Content Marketing session. You can check out the presentation on SlideShare here.

    Wonderopolis was also honored during the WOMMY luncheon, with a GOLD WOMMY in the Cause Marketing category. Wonderopolis is a rare treat for an agency. It was birthed out of a trusting partnership between agency and client, in this case a not-for-profit.

    I’d like to say again… Wonder is simple, but in order to Wonder out loud – it takes courage. Thank you Emily and NCFL for having the courage to engage and inspire all of us to Wonder out loud. And to my co-workers at Brains on Fire, thank you for being fearless in bringing a strategy like Wonderopolis to life. It really is making a difference.

    I’ll leave you with this little nugget from a blog post: “Our class emailed Wonderopolis and nominated a wonder. It appeared this past week! And in less than two months time! The wonder is called How Do Mood Rings Work? I cannot wait to share it with my class tomorrow. Check it out! Thanks, Wonderopolis, for acting on our curiosity!”

  • The Retooling of Retailing: How social networks are changing the consumer/retailer relationship

    Posted on November 16th, 2011 by and currently 11 commenting.

    The loot.

    Here’s the thing: I don’t like malls. Call me germaphobic (or perhaps I’ve just seen one too many apocalyptic pandemic films for my own good), but being trapped indoors with a crowd breathing recycled air makes me feel like I’m a hop, skip and a viral cell away from the flu du jour. And while the hustle and bustle of holiday shoppers has a certain seasonal charm, watching overstressed, grown adults have public meltdowns and temper tantrums at the register generally puts a ding in my Christmas spirit. Thus I avoid the mall at all costs. Not just during the holidays, but every day.

    Last weekend, however, compelled by early onset Christmas spirit and a Klout perk Macy’s gift card, I found myself circling the lot with the rest of the parking lot sharks. Before I headed in, I checked-in on Four Square, only to discover that Macy’s was also offering a “special” (i.e. additional discounts) to anyone checked-in. With very little effort, I had earned myself significant savings – and Macy’s planted a little love seed in my heart. As I stood in line waiting to checkout, I began thinking about how technology and social connectivity are not only influencing, but changing, the retail landscape.

    I stumbled across this timely article on Monday. The author suggests that “Connectivity has shifted the balance of power to individual shoppers. The traditional ways that retailers and merchants reach out to users and how they expect them to discover, shop and pay are getting disrupted by mobile and social. And that’s forcing companies to react.”

    The article goes on to explain that almost half of all shoppers are coming to stores armed with smartphones, altering the ways we relate to and interact with retailers. Not only does the technology in our pockets give us instant access to product ratings and reviews, it gives us the ability to shop for a better deal with the click of a button – and decide whether that better deal is worth driving across town for.

    The ways in which consumers are learning about products and services are shifting as well. In contrast to the days when people made decisions perusing store shelves and aisles, today we’re arming ourselves with information – and so much more – by turning to our social networks. Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square says consumers are learning about products through social connections on Twitter, by following their passions and interests.

    When I reflect on several of my own recent purchases, it rings true. After my iPhone shattered, I went on the hunt for an indestructible case by throwing a question out to my Twitter followers. The name “Otterbox” was quickly Tweeted back by many. When I decided to invest in iPhone insurance, my social network (and their glowing recommendations) directed me to a company called SquareTrade. In these instances, my social network wasn’t just influential in my purchase, it was integral.

    So what does the future of consumer/retailer relationships look like? John Donohoe, CEO of eBay, says he expects more changes in the next three years in commerce than in the last 15.

    As to be expected, Word of Mouth will continue to be an increasingly influential force when it comes to decision-making about which companies to support, which products to buy and where and how customers will spend their dollars.

    The fact is that with mobile and social, consumers are much more savvy. They are equipped with the latest information and the latest prices whenever and wherever they go shopping. And with social channels, they are swayed by and discover products through their friends, not through ads.

    How have you noticed retailers and service providers adapting to the increasing influence of social networks and Word of Mouth?

  • WOM-portunities: Tracking Your Shipments is Boring

    Posted on October 21st, 2011 by and currently 0 commenting.

    In the last week or so, I’ve purchased a few things online, sent a watch to the manufacturer for repair, and have shipped a few things to clients scattered across different states. Needless to say, I’ve been looking at a whole lot of tracking numbers and ‘in transit’ statuses.

    The last item I followed around the country was the repaired watch. When it arrived, I took it out of the package, set the date and time, and put it on my wrist. And then, after two weeks of digitally watching small cardboard boxes journey around the country, I had a weird thought: “I kind of wish I had another package to track.”

    I thought about how as humans, we love to have something to look forward to: the weekend, the beginning or end of a project, the change of a season, getting a new car, the possibility of a new message in our inbox. Many of us may hate waiting, but there’s something we absolutely love about expectation.

    What’s also interesting was that watching those packages step closer and closer to their destinations was kind of exciting, even though the process overall was incredibly sterile. Think about it – you take a tracking ID or random numbers, plug it into a field on a corporate-looking website, and get brief status updates when the package hits certain checkpoints. Which makes sense. The name of the game in shipping is accuracy and efficiency. Many times people simply want to know that the package they sent arrived safely.

    I can’t help but see an opportunity for word of mouth, though. Imagine the ways that a company could breathe life ad creativity into that process. What if a business used the fact that we love expectation to start giving us an amazing experience before we even received the product we bought from them? (There may be some great examples of this, I know many companies use email, but I struggled to find anything noteworthy specific to shipment tracking. Please share if you’ve got one.)

    What if, instead of seeing that my watch just “Departed the facility in Ogden, UT,” I received a message from the watch itself:

    Just got out of surgery and onto the bus home. It’s dark in here, but my seat is really comfortable. It’s that new bubble stuff they use now. The new parts feel great, but I think the medication is confusing me – my time is set to the year 1999 and I could have sworn it was 2011 when I went in. Oh well. It’s been nice not having you wake me up so early everyday.

    I’m leaving Utah now, and I should be there in a few days. I told the bus driver we should stop and blow some steam off on Bourbon Street in Louisiana after a long drive, but he ignored me. He didn’t look like he’d be fun to go out with anyways – we can celebrate when I get home. See you soon, and I hope you haven’t missed any appointments because I’ve been gone.

  • The Art of We: The Future of WOMM

    Posted on September 19th, 2011 by and currently 18 commenting.

    Over the past several months, millions of Americans have been logging off Facebook. In May alone, more than 6 million said good-bye to the social networking site for good. To give you some perspective, that loss is greater than the total population of Denmark. It may seem like a monumental figure, (let’s be honest, if most of us lost 6 million customers in a month, we’d not only be sounding the alarm, we’d be looking for a new job, too…) but for a company that has over 500 million users, it’s a drop in the bucket. At least for now.

    For the past year or so, I have started to notice the people around me putting down their smartphones. I’ve watched them grow progressively more comfortable stepping away from the Twitter stream in order to engage in “real-time” hobbies or spend time with their families and friends. They’ve left status updates unmanned. They’ve silenced their ringers, alerts, whistles and bells. And they have begun to become much more present in their real lives.

    And to be perfectly frank, I find it refreshing.

    I believe we are witnessing the beginning of what I lovingly refer to as “The Return to Real Life.”

    For years brands have been putting their eggs in various online baskets. Some were early adopters, others waited for the water to warm up a bit before they hopped in. Many jumped on the bandwagon in search of a quick fix and a magic bullet.

    But there is no quick fix. There is no magic bullet.

    You know why? Because real life is complicated. And real life happens offline.

    Unlike widgets, wonkets, dashboards and baubles, WOMM is sustainable because it is about the people. Real people. It is founded on real relationships. Among other things, WOMM celebrates transparency, trust and community. Three things that cannot be bought, coerced, contracted, rushed or forced.

    Real relationships do not come from shiny toys, the app of the day or the simple click of a button. Real relationships stem from a genuine, honest place. Real relationships take time, patience and tending.

    Once upon a time, we were primarily exposed to marketing messages through radio, television and print. We didn’t necessarily choose which brands we were exposed to. We sat through commercials, we drove past billboards, we flipped the radio dial. We were exposed to a certain set of brands and marketing messages, and we exercised choice in store aisles when we decided whether or not to buy a certain product or service. We lived in a world of being marketed to.

    Today, almost every brand – big and small – has a Facebook page and a Twitter page, and despite advances in DVRing and commercial-free radio, we find ourselves in a somewhat un-evolved situation. The mediums have changed, but we’re still being marketed at.

    Instead of sitting through a 30 second TV spot, we’re logging on to find the same conversation taking place in a difference venue…and it still sounds like a (140 character) rendition of the same, old, tired conversation: “ME ME ME ME ME! Buy MY product. Buy MY service. I am so great.”

    So what does that mean for the future of WOMM?

    When I look into my crystal ball, I see The Return to Real Life as the dawning of a new era. An emergence of WOMM in its purest form.

    I believe people will begin to make better use of the minutes of their precious lives.

    I believe part of that will include applying much stricter filters to the messages and marketing that they invite into their live and wallets.

    I believe brands that dare to show their humanness will be welcomed into our hearts and homes.

    I believe there will be a shift from online to offline.

    I believe brands that turn their focus from tools and numbers to the real people on the other end of the conversation will not only survive, but thrive, while those who have refused to adapt will find themselves on one side of a self-created wall – and their customers on the other.

    I believe brands will not be evaluated based on the number of Facebook fans, rather they will be defined (and celebrated) by the quality of their interaction with fans.

    I believe the most successful brands will stop focusing on toys and technology, and start focusing on human beings.

    I believe brands will start to recognize the innate and precious power of a small group of passionate, vocal fans.

    I believe people will want to connect with brands that make them feel like friends and family.

    I believe people will want to connect with brands that are loved by their friends and family.

    I believe people will start turning down the volume on brands that talk AT them, and tuning into brands that not only talk WITH them, but listen TO them, too.

    A curious observation: If you take the word “ME” and flip the M 180 degrees, it turns into a new word: WE.

    The future of WOMM: I believe that people will embrace and elevate brands that reject the notion of “ME” and actively practice the art of “WE.”

    This week Brains on Fire is  hosting the 5th annual FIRE Sessions. This is an extra special time of year when we get to come together with our clients, friends and kindred spirits – and take it offline.

    This year, Scott Stratten, Duncan Wardle, John Moore and Geno Church will help us take a closer look at our relationships with our customers. We’ll be thinking beyond the “LIKE” button, and getting down in trenches as we dig into the business of creating genuine, long-lasting connections.

    You can be part of the FIRE Sessions experience by joining us (and host Mack Collier) for a special LIVE BlogChat by following the hashtag #blogchat tomorrow at 1 p.m. Or stay tuned to the entire day of FIRE Sessions by following hashtag #FireSessions on Twitter.

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